Europe’s Daylight Saving Time

Europe’s daylight saving schedule runs from the last Sunday of March until the last Sunday of October. An EU (European Union) directive states that the last Sundays of March and October would be the dates definitively adopted for the daylight saving schedule among EU countries. Daylight saving time starts and ends at 1am (01:00) UTC in many countries in Europe, which enables these countries to change their clocks at the same global time but in different local times.

Time Zones

There are four major different time zones across Europe:

Western European Time (WET), observed in Portugal, Faroe Islands and the Canary Islands and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) which is in the same time zone and observed in Iceland, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Daylight saving time ends when the clocks move one hour back from 2am (02:00) to 1am (01:00) local time, except in Iceland, which does not observe the daylight saving schedule.

Eastern European Time (EET), observed in countries including Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania, Kaliningrad (Russia), Turkey, Ukraine. Daylight saving ends when the clocks move one hour back from 4am (04:00) to 3am (03:00) local time in most of these places except Kaliningrad, where the clocks turn from 3am (03:00) to 2am (02:00).

Most of the western parts of Russia extending to Moscow are in the Moscow time zone, Moscow Standard Time (MSK). Daylight saving time ends when the clocks move back from 3am (03:00) to 2am (02:00) local time.

Kemerovo, Russia

Russia’s Kemerovo oblast will not apply its new time zone until March 28, 2010. Kemerovo’s new time zone will be UTC+7 during DST and on UTC+6 when it does not observe DST. Russia starts and ends DST on the same dates as the EU. Russia starts DST on the last Sunday of March and ends it on the last Sunday of October. However, the clocks move back by one hour from 3am (03:00) to 2am (02:00) local time across Russia’s time zones.

The United Kingdom and Ireland

It is important to note that the United Kingdom does not observe Greenwich Mean Time ( GMT, also known as UTC) all year round. It switches from GMT to British Summer Time ( BST) when it starts its daylight saving schedule. Ireland switches from GMT to Irish Summer Time ( IST) when daylight saving time starts.

Note: Any reference to summer in this article relates to summer in the northern hemisphere. Also, the CIA World Factbook refers to Kemerovo as an oblast, which is an administrative subdivision or territorial division.